Friday, January 06, 2012

No Justice for US Muslims

Tareq Mehanna found guilty

On December 20, 2011, Tareq Mehanna was found guilty of terrorismsupport by a Boston jury, despite the fact that the government reliedsolely on innuendo and prejudice against Muslims to make their case.Mehanna is an Egyptian-American Muslim who was arrested by the FBI in2009, at the age of 27. Mehanna, who faces life in prison, is accusedof translating al Qaeda propaganda into English, as well as seekingterrorist training in Yemen, though he insists he was just travelingfor religious study. Mehanna's sentencing is scheduled for April 12.Richard Hugus, in an article, “The Inquisition Comes to Boston,”published on uruknet.info, writes:

“The recent finishing off of the Bill of Rights in the NationalDefense Authorization Act was actually just a formality. The UnitedStates has been able to persecute and convict US citizens for a longtime now whether they had a trial by jury or not... Jury trials don’tmake any difference when it comes to terrorism cases because theAmerican public is deeply ignorant and long trained to be intimidatedby authority.”

Mehanna's trial went on for eight weeks.

“It was a circus of prejudicial evidence, government-coercedinformers, Patriot Act snooping by the FBI, phony government expertson terrorism, and all-around ignorance about the Muslim religion,”writes Hugus.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a front group led by CharlesJacobs, demonstrated outside the courthouse. This same group has beenspearheading the campaign against the show, “All American Muslim.”

“The only thing the United States was able to prove in its caseagainst Tarek Mehanna was that he was opposed to the war in Iraq,”writes Hugus.

“There was nothing he said in the hundreds of instant messages andonline chats, stolen from his computer and introduced absurdly asevidence, which would not have been said by any opponent of thatgenocidal attack.”

This case is all the more unfortunate because it could have beenprevented. The Roxbury Mosque dropped its charges against CharlesJacobs and the David Project, even after they had clear evidence thatthey were guilty of the Federal crime of conspiracy against rights,thus allowing the Zionists to continue their plots against otherMuslims. I understand that legal proceedings are expensive andstressful, but Charles Jacobs, a Polish immigrant, could have ended upbehind bars. Instead, yet another Muslim, innocent of any criminalwrongdoing, faces life in prison just because the Muslim communitywanted to finish building their beautiful mosque.

There is so much evidence that the legal attacks against Muslims arepurely racist in content. This author was even targeted by CharlesJacobs, Robert Spencer, and their group of anti-Muslim supporters,accused of support for terrorism, due to her pro-Palestinecommentaries under the pseudo-name “Maria Hussain.” Court documentsfrom the Roxbury Mosque defense showed that Zionist prosecutorsplanned to prosecute me for my opinions. However, according to emailsrevealed as part of the discovery process, they found out my real nameand decided not to prosecute me, because although I profess Islam,they were not sure if my ethnic background might be Jewish.

Glenn Greenwald comments that “this meaningless, definition-free word— Terrorism — drives so many of our political debates and policies...It’s a word that simultaneously means nothing and justifieseverything.”

Mehanna's alleged support for terrorism was based on “Sawt-al-Jihad”magazine – a document that government witness Evan Kohlmann claimedwas found on his computer, even though there was no evidence that thedocument had ever been opened at all.

Evan Kohmann has a history of being unqualified. He also served forthe outrageous prosecution of the honorable Imam Yassin Aref ofAlbany, NY. During Aref's trial, the government’s expert, EvanKohlmann, gave totally wrong misinformation about IMK to the jury inorder to depict Aref as a terrorist because he was once employed bythe Islamic Movement for Kurdistan (IMK), which the US government doesnot even consider to be a terrorist organization. The “expert witness”Evan Kohlmann testified to a ridiculous connection between the IMK,the militant Kurdish Ansar al-Islam organization, al-Qaeda, and SaddamHussein, in order to incriminate the innocent man, who came to the USas a refugee.

Mehanna was fortunate enough to have a real expert on the defense, butit didn't seem to matter much.

Dr. Marc Sageman, a terrorism consultant and former CIA case agent, aflight surgeon in the U.S. Navy and a CIA case officer in Afghanistancoordinating America’s covert operation against the Soviet occupation,testified that the videos on Mehanna's computer were never used as arecruiting tool for al-Qaida.

This testimony was all the more remarkable, because Sageman hasstudied al-Qaida from its birth in 1988; he knew and lived with allthe major commanders of the mujahideen who were fighting the Sovietarmy. He consults for the Defense Department, the Department ofHomeland Security and the CIA. He has classified security clearance,which the under-qualified government witnesses don’t have.

In response, Evan Kohlmann, merely testified that the kind of videosand documents that Mehanna translated and promoted online wereallowing al-Qaida to recruit and incite young men to violence.

“He tells stories,” Sageman tried to explain.

Even after questioning, Mehanna continued to praise his trip to Yemen.“I didn’t regret it for a second,” he said, “how could you? Those arethe best two weeks of my life.”

Some of Mehanna's old friends testified against him under governmentpressure, citing his “extremist” views, including Daniel Maldonado, aNew Hampshire native serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleadingguilty to training alongside al Qaeda members in Somalia.

“The government decides if I can hug my children,” Maldonado admittedduring his appearance at the trial.